The Seat-Losers
There are those who have regained their seats, but there are also those who have lost theirs. The Democratic Party chiefs gave the former group of MPs and members of the National Council who stood against the dictate of the president and his bodyguards, Shehu and Pollo, their epithet. Shehi, Vioni and Sereqi’s attempts to turn the party’s broken rudder around at the last minute were handled in the worst possible way, in exactly the same way as their predecessors, the motionists or right-wingers, had been treated. Caught up in an internal debate unfolding against a backdrop of the state’s destruction and the disappearance of party structures, the DP shrank into the parliamentary chamber, from where its MPs spoke all day in the name of the electorate. A handful of people, challenged from all sides, became participants in a multi-part comedy that television, taking its orders from above, broadcast from time to time.
Thus were born the seat-losers, who hold the mandate of the Albanians but do not go to meet the Albanians. Much ink has been spilled over the tense situation in the South. Officially, the Democratic Party considers the situation in this part of the country extremely dangerous and out of control. The party’s leaders never fail to stress in all their public statements that there are committees in the South and that the South is the only problem preventing us from going to elections. The state media also make their contribution, reporting tragic events in Vlorë, Sarandë and Gjirokastër. A picture that looks hopeless and stretches northward from the banks of the Shkumbin.
Having won on 26 May and 20 October, the DP meanwhile controls the entire southern part of Albania. In Sarandë and Vlorë, in Gjirokastër and Tepelenë, the DP’s leading figures have received the voters’ ballots and represent them in central and local government. Genc Pollo in Përmet, Gëzim Zile in Vlorë, Leonard Demi in Sarandë, Blerim Çela in Tepelenë and Fatos Beja in Gjirokastër are the people’s representatives, paid by the Albanian state to bring the voice of their electorate to the highest bodies. These MPs, who raise their hands on behalf of the voters, judges, Përmet residents and people of Tepelenë, are undoubtedly the strangest parliamentarians ever seen.
A year after they were “appointed” as MPs, these people are afraid to go to their constituencies.
Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Fino urged MPs to go to their constituencies and help calm the situation and restore the government authority laid waste by the unrest. Although made by a socialist politician, the appeal above should have sounded reasonable to Albanian MPs, especially those from the South. But it seems Pollo, Beja, Çela and Demi are hard of hearing on that side. Not one of them has yet visited the area where they were elected, and none seems to intend to do so. Although Berisha has declared that he will go among the “silent majority,” no one is sure whether he will actually go and verify this. And not one of the MPs mentioned above has dared to go and “calm” this majority in the South. At the very least, these people could have gone to offer condolences to the many families of those killed, who may also have been among their voters in May and October 1996. After that, since they are paid as MPs, they would have had the right to speak in the people’s name.
Nevertheless, perhaps no one should have expected much from Pollo, a name which, in a language spoken by Pollo and many others, means that Pollo and his friends are bigger than the rest. Pollo and his friends are louder, but much further away… at least no farther away than Sabiha Kasimati, Koka, Hotel Rogner or the ferry Vkinga. Pollo knows what we mean…
K.J